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Topic: Axon and video camera (Read 2501 times)

I was wondering if the axon can take video in from a digital camcorder? If so how would you start it?. Im trying to not have to buy camera for my robots vision because they are expensive. If you know of ceap ones please let me know. I think 200 for one is to much. Also is it possible to build a camera that you can use with the axon and roborealm? By which i mean take a camera from a phone and make a board to connect it to and then use it with the software and hardware above. Like i would with a digital camcorder.

I was wondering if the axon can take video in from a digital camcorder?

Try some math...Eg. 640 x 480 x 15 fps = 4,608,000 bps (4.6 Mb/s plus some overhead) and that's just the raw pixel data that you need to transfer.And then you want to apply vision algorithms to the data...

Im trying to not have to buy camera for my robots vision because they are expensive. If you know of ceap ones please let me know. I think 200 for one is to much.

Considering the amount of work you'd need to do and the years of experience you'd need to make it possible, it's not all that expensive. It's not the cameras that costs, it's the development of the software for the FPGA/ARM/whatever and since few are available, they keep the price high... When everyone and his uncle sells them, they'll be much cheaper.

Also is it possible to build a camera that you can use with the axon and roborealm? By which i mean take a camera from a phone and make a board to connect it to and then use it with the software and hardware above. Like i would with a digital camcorder.

Yes, it's possible for someone with years and years of experience and lots of time at hand, but don't expect to find someone willing to throw in hundreds of free hours to save you $200 - it's a thing that some would do because they can and find it fulfilling in some way, but it will be very expensive if the time involved is included in the total.

The proper way to go at it:Google...Read...Calculate...Experiment...(Repeat as necessary).

Even if you don't get to a working result, you'll still have learned something along the way.

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Regards,Søren

A rather fast and fairly heavy robot with quite large wheels needs what? A lot of power?Please remember...Engineering is based on numbers - not adjectives

The $200 CMUCam* / Blackfin / etc replaces a $300 computer and a $30.00 webcam - that's a big savings in both size and $$$ in exchange for a more limited processing power.

What kind of an object are you trying to recognize? You could probably get away with a simple line-scan sensor (TSL1401 comes to mind) and an RGB light source to determine color. This would only require 128 * ADC_resolution (=1024?) bits in memory per reading, which might actually fit into SRAM.

Pretty much any object i kind of wanted to use roborealm because its quite a nice program but im also try to be as chaep as poassible so ill take what i can get for advice. Could i just get an old webcam that i then send images wirelessly from it to a pc running roborealm then send the action back to the axon which would then interpret the command and perform it?

What kind of an object are you trying to recognize? You could probably get away with a simple line-scan sensor (TSL1401 comes to mind) and an RGB light source to determine color. This would only require 128 * ADC_resolution (=1024?) bits in memory per reading, which might actually fit into SRAM.

so i could get the tracking and then a webcam for the recognition with wireless connectivity with a bluetooth sending a response back could i not get the same result even though its slow it could work.

What kind of an object are you trying to recognize? You could probably get away with a simple line-scan sensor (TSL1401 comes to mind) and an RGB light source to determine color. This would only require 128 * ADC_resolution (=1024?) bits in memory per reading, which might actually fit into SRAM.

The question is could this system see depth our would you add another sensor like a sonar range finder to see depth so that you could get a crude outline and depth of an object? I might be able to add this along side the camera. Is that possible or im i going a little far?

Could I use both the camera for basic shape and color. While the laser gets the deffinet shape and color along with depth or is it over kill? Which one one is cheaper and and more benificial?

Now keep in mind I want to use a pc to take in data wirelessly from the robot and send commands to it wirelessly for higher functions like object manipulation and recicnition. While basic stuff like avoiding obsticles is handled by the axon itself. Using simple sharp irs and sonar to detect and avoid walls and such.

That was a very good reading. It got me thinking i really dont need to use a camera necessarily to make this robot see. My guess is i could use a small group of sensors to just track the basic shapes and colors of the objects. What do you guys think would be the best sensors for this task?

To save a bit and make it possible to handle mentally, perhaps break out a camera chip from a mouse and start playing with that (both the needed optics and the read-out).

They're low resolution cams (from around 16x16 px and up to ...64 px IIRC) and monochrome, but you'd be able to learn a lot from such a cam and if you have a mouse that's deemed unworthy of its original purpose, it could be free - some offices just throw out working ones if they eg. needs better quality. For experimenting, the most important isn't resolution, but availability of a datasheet.

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Regards,Søren

A rather fast and fairly heavy robot with quite large wheels needs what? A lot of power?Please remember...Engineering is based on numbers - not adjectives

There are cameras in a pc mouse. I know theres is a laser but how would you be able to use of these cameras to do what we are talking about please inliten me. Another thought i had is what about a camera from a cellphone would that work as well?

The LASER is just there as a light and some optical mice has an LED for that, but they all have cams to see how the mouse moves in relation to what you slide it over (by comparing consecutive samples).

Another thought i had is what about a camera from a cellphone would that work as well?

No, the whole point is to seriously lower the amount of pixels to reduce handling time (although I haven't looked into the speed of readout possible with a mouse cam).It makes it easier in data handling as well to keep to the small format of a mouse cam, so it's perfect for learning.Phone cams come in anything from 640x480 to around 5Mpixels.

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Regards,Søren

A rather fast and fairly heavy robot with quite large wheels needs what? A lot of power?Please remember...Engineering is based on numbers - not adjectives

Thats cool im either thinking of useing the sparkfun as mentioned above or I might buy a cheap webcam to play with tell I can afford the blackfin. I might play with the mouse idea to. Ill think about it. The cheap web cam might be my best bet tell the blackfin can be purchased or if the sparkfun turns out.